Star Trek: Tomorrow Lingers - Renewal
by Aconitum-Napellus
Summary: Spock and Christine spend their leave at Christmas in an isolated house, surrounded by snow. Rated 18. Part of the 'Tomorrow Lingers' series.


Outside, the world is white from north to south, from east to west. Outside, the sun is rising like a sliver of ripe fruit over a quivering horizon, slipping up from behind a low line of hills, through a band of eggshell sky, and up behind a low blanket of cloud. It is visible for a few minutes, and then gone again. For a few minutes, the world is pink and gold.

Inside, the sunlight shines briefly through the shaded windows, and then it is gone. Gold glows against the ecru blinds, and then it is gone. Then all the light is blue and shades of blue. The house, inside, is warm as summer, and no one has seen the brief moment of real sun.

On the bed, his teeth sink into her skin. Cool, soft, a salty taste. He loves to taste her. He loves to draw his tongue slowly up her spine. He loves it because he feels her shiver, because she says no at that tickling sensation, but he can feel all the yesses in her mind, crashing like waves into him. He can feel her nerves being pushed to their limits, teetering on that vanishing knife blade between pain and pleasure. He can feel all of her impulses crashing into his own mind, causing his own inhibitions to let go, causing all of the self-imposed rules and dictums to melt away.

He is behind her, buried in the cool softness of her body, burying himself again and again and again. Sweat between their skins, her sweat beading against the desert dry of his own. His hands on her shoulders, mouth on the back of her neck now, tongue still finding the little knobs of her spine, finding that salt taste.

She moans and her moan vibrates into his mouth through her spine and skin. He thrusts again and again, slipping his hands from her shoulders around to her chest, to her breasts, soft, hard-nippled, swaying against his palms. He can feel the crescendo coming, building inside her as well as himself. He sends his mind into hers, lets their thoughts explode together, lets a supernova blast out, out, out, until all the world is singing light and joy.

The quiet returns like falling snow. He can hear her breathing. He is pushed against her, his hips against the softness of her behind, his flesh deep inside her. She is still moving deep inside, those muscles there clenching around him, holding him, holding him, as he softens.

His cheek is on her back. He can hear her heartbeat, swift and strong. He can hear the swoosh of the blood in her veins. He rests there, and she rests, head down against the soft bedclothes. He moves a hand into the skeins of her hair, copper-gold today, brushing over her shoulders, ruffled and silken to his fingers. He kisses her skin, and he feels a little spike in her mind, a little autonomous reaction.

'I love you,' she says, and her voice is a whisper.

He kisses her again, leaves her body, draws away. She slips onto her side, and he comes down alongside her, holding her in his arms, kissing her lips. There's no taste of makeup, nothing artificial. Apart from the hair colour, she's as natural as a newborn.

They lie there a little while, warm as cats, just breathing, just lying together, forehead against forehead. He can feel her thoughts like little waves shushing against a shingle shore. No words, nothing defined. It's emotion he can feel, surging and subsiding against his mind.

They go to the shower, and steam under the water. He washes her and she washes him. A desert creature, he tips his head back and lets the rain stream down over his body. He luxuriates in it. He luxuriates in the feeling of the foaming suds on his skin. He wants to make the water hotter, but she wouldn't be able to stand it. He will do anything for her comfort, so he settles for the cooler water temperature. It's warm enough.

After the shower they step together into the warm blast of the dryer. It's a blissful thing, standing in that desert wind. The hot air makes its way into every crevice of his body. By the time it's done, they can both step into their clothes without the awkwardness of damp skin. Fabric slips on smoothly. She brushes her hair in front of the mirror. He smooths his own. They look like civilised beings again.

She makes coffee. He finds coats and gloves. She pours the coffee into insulated mugs and he hands her the warm outer garments. He pushes his feet into boots. She sits to do the same, and he crouches to tighten and tie her laces for her. She smiles and places a hand on the crown of his head, like royalty blessing a subject.

The brief opening of the door makes a meeting of two worlds. The heat inside meets the cold, and for a moment, like every morning, the change is a startling thing. Then she closes the door behind them, and they're in a new world.

The scene outside is a Christmas card. The trees are iced with thick rims of snow. Every harsh angle is softened with snow. The sky is grey-white with snow clouds, and icicles hang from the eaves in sparkling spears. Their breath clouds in little pearl drops in the air.

The little pine tree to the right of the veranda sparkles with golden-white fairy lights. He watched her thread them there on their first day, letting only the smallest trace of a smile find its way onto his face. She had reached up to loop the strands over the branches, and he had come forward and put his hands on hers. He had done the higher loops, she had done the lower branches, then he had tucked the power unit close to the trunk, and turned them on.

He had been struck with the thought that she would make a perfect angel on the top of that tree. She would have laughed at that, had he voiced his thought. She would have been right to laugh at such an illogical fancy. She would have railed at being used as an ornament and nothing more. She is so much more.

He lifts his coffee and sips it, and the heat spreads through the inside of his body. His face is burningly cold, but he's warm in his clothes. She stands in silence beside him, and drinks too. It's too quiet to break the silence with words. Their breath steams after every mouthful, and the steam rises up to merge with the rest of the white world.

It is a perfect world here. It's a perfect opposite of his own world. There, everything is shades of red, orange, brown. Here, now, all is white and blue. The sky is a watercolour wash of white-blue-grey clouds. The snow is all shades of white and blue, angling from one to the other wherever shadows fall. The trees are all black stick frames with toppings of white fluff. It's such a long way from his home, but this landscape is in his blood too. His mother would remind him of that. He would tell her that is fancy rather than fact, but somehow he believes it, all the same.

Geese fly over, high in the sky, calling as they go. It's a clear sound, something that ripples so sharply through the freezing air that it doesn't seem diminished at all by distance. He's related to them, too, far, far in the lost annals of time. He's a part of all of this.

She slips her gloved hand into his. She presses her love against his fingers. He pressures back. There's no transference of warmth or sensation or thought through the thick gloves, but the pressure is evidence enough of the fact they are one.

They step down from the veranda and walk through snow that is calf deep, making the first footprints of the day. Every footprint gains its own blue shadow, deep inside. He imagines a child asking, _why is the sky blue on Earth?_ Easy enough to explain. It is in the explaining that the joy lies. It is a gift to be able to impart knowledge to others.

'Look,' she says.

There's a bird table in the garden, still scattered with yesterday's seed. She's generous with seed, regardless of how he warns her against establishing a habit which will then be broken when they leave. _I'll leave a mound for them_, she says. _I'll leave them a world of seed._ He warns her not to touch the dirty bird table, and she promises him that she never touches; just scatters from above. She always washes her hands when she comes back inside, every time.

There are birds on the table, pecking at the dark marks of seed on the dirty white ice and snow. Their feathers are ruffled, trying to trap warmth in the air there. They look fat, but they're struggling to survive. He loves her for giving them seed against all logic. He loves her for feeding the raccoons and possums that come onto the veranda, for putting out food for stray cats. The veranda gets painted with paw prints through every night, because of the food she leaves out.

He feels compelled to list the proper names of all the birds on the table, but he leaves the words unspoken, because she knows their common names and doesn't need to know more. If he tells her the proper names, she will correct him with a laugh and a smile.

_The proper names don't mean anything_, she will tell him, _if people don't use them. It's the common names that count. That's where the commonality lies. It's how we communicate._

They stand and sip the coffee, and watch the world. They wade back to the veranda and place the cups down. With an unspoken accord they walk through the garden and into the road.

The wind is chill on his ears and cheeks, on the end of his nose. His fingers are warm in their gloves. Her face is glowing with the cold, but she must be warm inside her clothes.

The road is all thick with snow. If any skimmers have passed they have only blown a little snow to the sides of the road, but left no tracks. Everything is so quiet that he can hear the little crackles of temperature changes in ice and snow as the day unfolds. He can hear birdsong. They step into the depths of the snow like explorers entering a new world.

'Four days left,' she says as they walk.

They have four more days of leave. It's a precious thing, this leave.

'It's long enough,' he says, because they can stretch out those hours as long as they can make them. Time is all about perception. They can make things slow by secluding themselves here, in a house far from anywhere, stocked up with food, with only the most basic of amenities. No outside voices. No rush of the outside world. Just each other. They are each other's worlds.

They step down to the lakeside, where the land slopes softly to the shore. The ice stretches away, thick and hard as iron, covered with a blanket of snow. It's like a great plain where nothing grows. He knows she would like to strap on skates and whirl and dance over that slick surface. He also knows that she won't.

He wanted to do so himself, on the first day they walked down to the lake. He has done so, when she has been asleep. When she has been stretched out like Sleeping Beauty in the great king bed of theirs, he has crept out, skates around his neck, down to the lake. He has eased his feet into the skates and stepped out onto the ice, and pushed away from the shore.

The moon shone down like a platinum disc, that night. The fuller snowfalls were yet to come, and he had sailed onto the ice unimpeded, pushed left, right, left, right further and further along the straggling lake, along the path of the brilliant moon.

He had breathed in freezing air, and breathed it out in clouds that billowed past his face. He had skated until his face burnt with cold and his fingers were numb. He had turned back towards the house and skated homewards, under the glittering of all the stars he knew so well. There, 40 Eridani. There, Rigel and Betelgeuse. There, Sirius and Procyon. From Earth, they seem so impossibly far away. From Earth, space feels like an impossible dream.

When he had crept back into the house, she had still been asleep, warm and safe, her breath softly slipping between her lips, chest rising and falling. He had sat in the main room with a warm drink, letting his body temperature rise back to normal, before slipping back into bed with her. She had stirred, and murmured, 'Have fun?'

She had known, of course. He had tried to be as quiet and secret as a man could be, and she had still known.

He slips away in the night to skate, and she knows, but she doesn't mind.

'Next year,' she says, 'we'll come back here again. I'd love to have our first real Christmas here. Wouldn't you?'

He doesn't remind her that he doesn't celebrate Christmas. After all, it would be a lie. His mother always noted the festival, even if it sat oddly in the soaring temperatures of ShiKahr. Next year, perhaps, they will have more than just lights on that pine tree in the garden. Next year she will insist on a tree indoors, and sparkling decorations. She will insist on a mound of presents, brightly wrapped. On Christmas morning she will wake, and her face will be shining, and everything will be perfect.

'Are you cold?' he asks her.

'Of course,' she replies, but her voice is bright and happy, as if cold is the same thing as joy.

They should go back to the house, if she's cold, but exercise is also beneficial. He loves the pink in her cheeks and the brightness in her eyes.

They walk a quarter of a mile along the lake shore, a quarter of a mile back. By the time they return it's starting to snow.

'It's like angels falling from the sky,' she says.

Indulgently, he doesn't comment. Feathers would perhaps be a better simile. These flakes bear no resemblance to biblical angels, who are horrifying creatures by all accounts.

Their coffee is still sitting on the veranda, perfectly hot in the insulated mugs. The birds are still pecking at the seeds on the table. There are more footprints of animals on the veranda, up to the coffee mugs and going away again. He remembers an animated film he watched once with his mother, when he was very young. Centuries old, the picture had still been bright and clear. He had watched Snow White in a clearing, singing, as the birds came down around her. He had sat, entranced. His father had not approved.

'I'll make more coffee,' he says.

He doesn't want her to drink from the mug, if there's a risk a wild creature has touched it.

Perhaps she has the urge to say it will be fine, but she doesn't. He knows she is as scared as he is, and will do all she can to stay well.

'Are you hungry?' he asks.

'Starving,' she says.

Inside, he makes more coffee. He whips up batter in a bowl, and she sets the table. Then she sits, and watches him. She leans her elbows on the table and rests her chin in her hands. Her cheeks are still red, her face glowing, her hair loose about her shoulders. She looks like a little girl.

He pours the batter into a hot pan, making pancake after pancake and piling them under an insulating dome. They eat them in stacks, with syrup poured melting over the golden discs. She licks her fingers, sucking them to the tips, licking her lips, licking her fingers again. He watches her and controls the animal feelings that provokes.

She washes the dishes. He stands behind her and kisses her neck. He strokes a hand down her side, and she laughs and tells him he'd be lucky to get it twice in one day.

'I'm tired,' she says. 'Ridiculously sleepy. It's crazy.'

'It's not crazy. It is perfectly natural. If you're tired, then you must rest,' he tells her.

So, she slips out of the warm clothes and into something sheer. He smooths out the sheets and covers, and makes sure the heater is at the perfect temperature. She turns her face up to kiss him, and he kisses her. He lays a hand on the seven-month swelling of her belly, and feels the baby kick. He can feel the racing heartbeat through his touch. He can feel the little wordless movements of that nascent mind.

She climbs into bed, and covers herself up. He sits beside her, and finds her book, and starts to read aloud. She lies there, listening, eyes fixed on his face. He reads, turns the page, reads again. Her eyelids flutter, dip, lift again. Her eyes look so blue now. They're hardly seeing his face. Her eyes have become no more than a reflecting sheen, like the surface of a lake in summer.

He reads on, and her eyelids slip closed again. Open, closed. Her breathing becomes soft and slow. He's reading, but not thinking about the words. He's thinking about this little house and all that will have to be put in order before their return. He thinks about the year's leave they will both make use of. He thinks about how they will decorate the baby's room, and who they can employ to do so. He thinks about the things they will need to buy. They've put off all those thoughts, until now. They needed to be sure.

She is deep in sleep. He can feel it in the soft meanderings of her thoughts. Her mind is like a stream running far away. She must be dreaming something, something he can't know.

His voice trails into silence, and he puts the book down without a sound. Outside, everything is calm and still.


End file.
